Men Aren’t to Blame for Families’ Struggle with Work-Life Balance

“I see couples who are eager — desperate, even — to share both family and career. They both feel torn between work and home. It’s not men who get in the way of fixing that. It’s the workplace.”

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Heading north along the Hudson to beautiful, hilly Rhinebeck, New York, for this year’s Women & Power Conference at the Omega Institute, I had my doubts. This was my first visit to Omega, a holistic, yoga-filled retreat center in the woods, the kind of place that thrived in the Sixties. Seemed important to show up at this conference, titled “Men/Women: The Next Conversation,” but I feared getting stuck in a Sixties time warp full of speeches about Men as The Problem.

I get an inside look at how far from true that is these days. In my Manhattan therapy practice, I see couples who are eager — desperate, even — to share both family and career. They both feel torn between work and home. It’s not men who get in the way of fixing that. It’s the workplace. Everybody’s operating on schedules and career paths designed for guys with homemaker wives, and even though those are a small minority these days, our government has done little to update the workplace. As President Obama said in his last State of the Union address, we still have “policies that belong in a Mad Men episode.”

Was anybody going to talk about these issues that have such enormous impact on the daily lives of both women and men? If not, I figured, settling into my cabin, at least I’d take a few tai chi classes and enjoy the organic meals from local farms.

But just a few minutes into Friday evening’s opening talks, I got my first clue that I’d come to the right place: Omega’s co-founder Elizabeth Lesser announced: “It’s not enough for women to lean in; we have to change what we’re leaning into.” Loud applause.

♦◊♦

Saturday afternoon, talking with Stephanie Coontz, the marriage and family historian who would be Sunday’s keynoter, I said, “Most of my couples are not stuck in gender roles. What they’re struggling with are long hours in the workplace and a real lack of community support.”

Stephanie smiled. “Don’t steal my speech,” she said. “The issues today are not the same as they were in the Sixties. Women are not toppling men off their pedestals. When women get more, so do men. The problems are structural. It’s not that there’s something wrong with my child or my partner. It’s the system we’re both involved in.”

So true. In my practice, couples often come to me blaming themselves or each other. Stretched beyond capacity, they figure either they must be inept or their partner is selfish. We work on effective negotiation, task-sharing, mutual empathy. And I usually end up saying, “You understand, don’t you, that as a couple you are not alone? Here in the U.S we are not family friendly.” I go through a litany: Americans have long work hours, short vacations, costly and low-quality childcare, no parental leave, no legal mandate for paid sick days.

Up in the woods at Omega, these grim details were on everybody’s lips. “It’s been twenty-one years since we have updated family work policies in this country,” said Sarah Jane Glynn of the the Center for American Progress. No change since 1993, when the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act guaranteed covered workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave after a child’s birth or adoption or in case of a family illness. Meanwhile other industrialized nations have passed “work-family reconciliation” acts — legalizing parental leave, a gradual return to work after the birth of a child, and reduced hours. The result? The U.S. comes out last on a slew of measures of flexibility.

♦◊♦

On the train home from Rhinebeck I thought about my struggling couples and how the problems they are facing aren’t going to get solved at the kitchen table or in the nursery or even the therapist’s office. We need to work together to create broader change. The majority of Americans want a family friendly workplace. Why don’t we make it happen?

Next time you and your partner are at odds over work-family balance, remember that The Problem is the status quo. As the educator and activist Tony Porter said at Omega (note the powerful Sixties language), “My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman.”

Want a happier family life? Commit yourself to it. Get involved. Vote for candidates who support family friendly policy. Sit down with your partner and take 5 minutes on your laptops to make your voice heard in your city and in Washington. In the long run, it might mean at least as much to your relationship as date night.

About Jean Fitzpatrick

Jean Fitzpatrick is a marriage counselor and relationship therapist in New York City whose advice on love and couple life appear widely in the media. Her insights and sense of humor grow out of three amazing decades of marriage and raising kids. Visit Jean's websites at Therapist NYC and Slow Marriage.com . Follow her Real-Life Relationships blog and subscribe here for updates. Find Jean on Twitter and Pinterest @therapistnyc35

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6 Comments on "Men Aren’t to Blame for Families’ Struggle with Work-Life Balance"

Home vs career ….. there was a time when being a stay at home mom was a career decision within itself. I remember a feminist many years ago making a statement that the movement was to allow women, if they so choose to have equal footing with men in the business world. She went on to state that it wasn’t intended that women do both. Some of the blame has to go to the people who pushed careers over family thus making a womens value more valuable if they have a career. My wife and I made choices when we… Read more »

Tom, I couldn’t agree more re the inappropriate stigma. (In the paid economy, of course, child care workers are shockingly undervalued.). And I guess you’re pointing to the fallacy of “having” it all. Much more helpful to consider our life as a living creation. That said, seems that few couples today can find a way to live on one income. A middle-class salary doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to. Stephanie Coontz has done some very interesting work on how our growing inequality is hitting families hard.

Money, agreed that men and women Gen Xers grew up, for the most part, with a home vs career model and are seeking ways to integrate these. There’s been some interesting research showing that often men spend quite a lot of time contributing to household chores such as bill-paying but women focus more on those that are time-sensitive, with the result that women feel more stressed out a lot of the time. Both are operating in a time-starved home and family life.

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mony74

2 years 11 months ago

I agree that ultimately, the deck is stacked against egalitarian relationships and families. We are trying to fight for our families, our selves, and our relationships within a culture that squeezes us harder and hard. However, there is also a dynamic between men and women-especially us Gen xers- where the expectation and practice is that women lean in at home, much harder than men. We still assume that age old role, even though we also have jobs outside of the home. For men, they are just coming into assuming their domestic responsibilities. Men of our generation grew up with fathers… Read more »

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trey1963

2 years 11 months ago

Sadly due to all the blame over the years being placed upon men (the gender) when resentment builds in a relationship over these issues it tends to be squarely placed on the man’s shoulders.

Trey, I think women often blame themselves, as well. The mommy wars grow out of this blame-centered thinking. Instead of finding blame, it is so much more constructive to work together and create change.